This past week my work at Bobbledy Books has almost exclusively been computer work. Although working on the computer doesn’t have the same feel as scribbling away with my pen and ink or swabbing away with my paintbrush, I actually enjoy it because it isn’t the most creative work that I do. Sometimes it’s nice to sit back, click some buttons, move things around, and then undo everything you did just by clicking some more buttons.
It helps a LOT that I have a special computer tablet I can draw directly into Photoshop with using a stylus.
It can’t replace my actual pen and ink (or, I won’t let it), but it does let me take lots of shortcuts.
For each image, I start with a pen and ink drawing I’ve scanned in:
And some watercolor textures I’ve scanned in:
And I start mapping out my drawing filling in basic shapes:
The king and his men are travelling out to the forest by the mountain, so obviously I have to add them in. I also added a clocktower in the foreground to give a better sense of how far away things are from the town:
I also like how the flag on the clock tower helps point you in the right direction.
“IN CASE YOU WEREN’T PAYING ATTENTION,” it says, “WE’RE GOING OVER HERE!!!”
I forgot that the king is rushing out to the forest to investigate a fire, so I added some smoke coming out of the trees. I also added another set of bushes in the foreground to frame the picture a little bit more, and put some shadows under the king and his horses.
I placed the shadows so that the horses feet aren’t touching them, which makes it look like they’re in such a rush that they aren’t even touching the ground – like they’re bounding towards the forest. It’s a simple trick that can add a lot of movement to your pictures.
I wanted the big green area to look like a bunch of fields instead of a big, grassy plain. Big, grassy plains remind me of Africa, and this king and his troops aren’t living in Africa. So I added some white lines to divide the land into a patchwork of fields.
It felt like the picture was almost there, but something was missing. Things weren’t quite how I wanted them to be. And then I remembered to add some shadows to the fields. It makes them feel more like hilly fields, doesn’t it?
Finally, I decided to add some more shadowy details to the mountain (to make it look a little more rocky) and to the clock tower (to make it look a little more clocky).
And that’s pretty much it. Of course, this looks very simple to do when I break it down into just a few steps, but it actually takes me kind of a long time to figure out. And I had to do 41 of them (though not all of them were as complex as this one) so needless to say, I was up pretty late a few nights this week!
I also painted last week’s auction item – a cinderella duck running down the stairs:
She’s available to bid on until 12:30 EST TODAY (MONDAY, 5/19!), so if you have a hankering, you can go bid on her HERE.
Each of our books also has a little project in the back two pages, so this time around we decided we would show kids how to make their own pop-up dragon. I learned how to make simple little beak-like pop-ups:
and then drew a dragon around it. I liked it, but didn’t like how beak-y the nose was. I tried to figure out a more squarish way to make the snout, but it didn’t work at all.
And I didn’t like how there wasn’t any room left to draw the dragon’s body (which has the most potential for fun and imagination). So I thought if we turned the page vertically and made a smaller cut, it might work better. I also tried adding some teeth:
I even was able to teach Matthew how to make one, which is the true test of whether this would be a good project for kids. And Matthew’s dragon didn’t disappoint in its weirdness:
So, after a bunch of prototypes, I think we have our winner.
I even tried sticking a crumpled paper towel in my dragon’s mouth, to look like smoke coming out.
I can’t wait to see what kids come up with for their dragon projects!!
All of that prototyping happened in the middle of the night when I was supposed to be painting. But that’s okay. When the creative spirit moves you, you kind of just have to go with it.
So this week I’ll be designing the step-by-step instructions on how to make these pop-up dragons. Matthew still has to actually write the instructions, which is actually really hard. It’s times like this that I’m really glad I’m not the writer.
Actually, I’m always really glad I’m not the writer.